Weekly news wrap-up: Less Stallman, more Red Hat vs. KDE

You might be hearing less of Richard Stallman in coming days. Tina Gasperson reports that the Free Software Foundation is increasingly using other spokespeople and focusing more on its message than the man who founded it.

It'll be interesting to see how that strategy works. Stallman often inspires strong feelings, which makes for frequent publicity, if nothing else.

In a related story, Robin "Roblimo" Miller responds to critics who say the GNU General Public License is "viral" by saying that borrowing code from "Proprietary Licenses in General" can get programmers in a lot more trouble.

Salon.com had an interesting story this week (on its free section, even) about how a group of anti-globalization activists in California are recycling old computers, loading them with Free Software and sending them to South America.

The Nasdaq fell for the fifth week in a row, closing Friday at 1,199.16, down more than 21 points from the September 20 close of 1,221.09. The Nasdaq's on track for its third straight losing quarter, pending any miracles Monday. Only one of our 11 Open Source-related stocks -- Borland -- closed up for the week.